If you're lucky, you'll experience that kind of ecstasy moment not only when you first fall in love, but throughout many years of being together. Well, maybe you won't necessarily cook naked and drunk, since life isn't always a Hollywood romantic comedy. But maybe, despite the ups and downs of long-term love, despite your most jaded and cynical inclinations, every once in a while you'll find yourself giddy with desire for your partner, grateful for the chance to “take what we love inside,” as Li-Young Lee put it, to live “from joy/to joy to joy…/from blossom to blossom to/impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.”
I Want to Breathe
I want to breathe
you in I'm not talking about
perfume or even the sweet odour
of your skin but of the air
itself I want to share
your air inhaling what you
exhale I'd like to be that
close two of us breathing
each other as one as that.
JAMES LAUGHLIN
One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII
I DON'T LOVE YOU AS IF YOU WERE A ROSE
I don't love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire.
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride;
I love you like this because I don't know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
PABLO NERUDA (TRANS. MARK EISNER)
Sunday Night in the City
Hand in hand, we lie on the bed,
our long legs crossed like folded
wings, our long feet touching the
footboard in shadow, carved like a headstone
with grapes. Your hair is ruffled, dark
as black walnut, curled like the tendrils of
vines. Your right hand is in my right
hand. My left hand is in your left.
Arms linked like skaters, we lie
under the picture of farmland: brush
dark and blurred as smoke, trees
lifting their ashen fish-skeletons,
and central to it, over us,
the calm pond
silent as if eternal.
SHARON OLDS
Variation on the Word Sleep
I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head
and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear
I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in
I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.
MARGARET ATWOOD
i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
E. E. CUMMINGS
From Blossoms
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
LI-YOUNG LEE
Alicante
An orange on the table
Your dress on the rug
And you in my bed
Sweet present of the present
Cool of night
Warmth of my life.
JACQUES PRÉVERT (TRANS. LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI)
When Sue Wears Red
When Susanna Jones wears red
Her face is like an ancient cameo
Turned brown by the age.
Come with a blast of trumpets,
Jesus!
When Susanna Jones wears red
A queen from some time-dead Egyptian night
Walks once again.
Blow trumpets, Jesus!
And the beauty of Susanna Jones in red
Burns in my heart a love-fire sharp like pain.
Sweet silver trumpets,
Jesus!
LANGSTON HUGHES
Elegie XIX:
To His Mistress Going to Bed
Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defie,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tir'd with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heavens Zone glittering,
But a far fairer world incompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th'eyes of busie fooles may be stopt there.
Unlace your self, for that harmonious chyme,
Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envie,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beautious state reveals,
As when from flowry meads th'hills shadowe steales.
Off with that wyerie Coronet and shew
The haiery Diademe which on you doth grow:
&nbs
p; Now off with those shooes, and then softly tread
In this loves hallow'd temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven's Angels us'd to be
Receavd by men: thou Angel bringst with thee
A heaven like Mahomets Paradice, and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easly know,
By this these Angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
Licence my roaving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdome, safeliest when with one man man'd,
My Myne of precious stones: My Emperie,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joyes are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth'd must be,
To taste whole joyes. Jems which you women use
Are like Atlanta's balls, cast in mens views,
That when a fools eye lighteth on a Jem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them:
Like pictures, or like books gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus array'd.
Themselves are mystick books, which only wee
(Whom their imputed grace will dignifie)
Must see reveal'd. Then since that I may know;
As liberally, as to a Midwife shew
Thy self: cast all, yea, this white lynnen hence,
There is no pennance, much less innocence:
To teach thee, I am naked first; why then
What needst thou have more covering then a man.
JOHN DONNE
The Shipfitter's Wife
I loved him most
when he came home from work,
his fingers still curled from fitting pipe,
his denim shirt ringed with sweat,
smelling of salt, the drying weeds
of the ocean. I'd go to where he sat
on the edge of the bed, his forehead
anointed with grease, his cracked hands
jammed between his thighs, and unlace
the steel-toed boots, stroke his ankles
and calves, the pads and bones of his feet.
Then I'd open his clothes and take
the whole day inside me—the ship's
gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
the voice of the foreman clanging
off the hull's silver ribs. Spark of lead
kissing metal. The clamp, the winch,
the white fire of the torch, the whistle,
and the long drive home.
DORIANNE LAUX
I Want
to shove my clothes
to one side of the closet,
give you the bigger half.
Quietly I'll hide most of my shoes,
so you won't know I have this many.
I will
rearrange furniture to add more,
find space on my shelves
for your many books,
nail up the placard that says
poets do it, and redo it, and do it again.
I want
to share a laundry basket,
get our clothes mixed up,
wait for the yelling
when my reds run wild
into your whites
turning them a luscious pink,
your favorite color of me.
I will
move my pillow
to the other side of the bed,
lay yours next to mine,
your scent on the fabric
always near me,
even on nights you're away.
I will
buy a new bureau to hold your
thousand and one black socks,
find a place for all those work boots,
the ones I refer to as big and ugly.
I want
more pots and pans to wash,
piles of them leaning high
from late night meals
cooked naked and drunk,
red wine pouring into
a sauce of simmering
tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil,
kisses bitten between bites,
and platefuls of our late hours,
stacking up into dawn.
I want
to stock cupboards, closets, and pantry,
fill the house with us.
I want to gain weight with you because our love, our love makes me fat.
KIM KONOPKA
Stability
WHEN LOVE ROLLS
Here's what happens after you've soared to the heights of ecstasy: You fall back to earth with a jolt, landing in the muck of monotony, uncertainty, or misery. Your once glorious relationship now seems boring, disturbing, or downright disastrous.
Unless…you drift gently down (using your nifty “mutual commitment” parachute) into the cozy nest of stability, where you and your partner share a Pottery Barn–perfect little life. Okay, maybe it's more of a Target toasty little life, but the point is, you find yourself secure and content in a trusting, loving relationship. Good-bye to the heart-thumping drama of ecstasy. Hello to stability, the couch-potato stage of love, where excitement comes in the form of doing the nightly crossword puzzle, watching the latest Fear Factor episode, or trying out the new Crock-Pot.
Or perhaps you're sipping herbal tea together, like the couple in Katherine Mansfield's “Camomile Tea.” And guess what? It's fun! You love it! There's no place you'd rather be. In fact, you feel positively smug about this happy domesticity. “We might be fifty, we might be five,/So snug, so compact, so wise are we!” you trill to yourself, like the speaker in Mansfield's poem. Maybe you're not burning up the bedroom the way you once did, but you still have your homey moments of desire: “Under the kitchen-table leg/My knee is pressing against his knee.”
What's more important, you think, is that you feel happily mated for life, like the couple in Donald Hall's “Valentine.” True, the speaker compares himself and his partner to a bunch of decidedly unglamorous animals—pudgy chipmunks, screeching bluebirds, and lumbering bears, all of them driven by biological need rather than romance—but his valentine brims with pure, playful love: “Hoptoads hop, but/Hogs are fatter./Nothing else but/Us can matter.”
Besides, maybe you are fatter or plainer or more worn than the romantic ideal of, say, a Brad Pitt or a Halle Berry, but in stability you don't really care. Your partner adores you anyway, you're sure of it, just as you find his snoring a comfort instead of an annoyance. Together you're building a home, maybe a family, so there's less time for workouts and beauty sleep. Sure, his six-pack abs were hot back in the day, but to you he looks more gorgeous now—bleary-eyed and unshaven, in a tattered fleece robe, reading the Sunday papers with you or rocking the baby back to sleep. To you, he's a prince, like Henry V, who woos the princess Katherine by telling her that he may not be the most handsome (his “face is not worth sun-burning”), he may not be the most witty or glib (unlike those “fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies' favours”), but he does have a “good heart” (which is steady like the sun, “for it shines bright and never changes”).
Of course, you need to watch it in stability—you can get so comfortable with each other, so familiar, that you're unaware of things like (a) gradually grossing out your partner by becoming a real slob, and (b) hurting your partner's feelings by saying she/he is a real slob but you love him/her anyway. Case in point: the mistress in William Shakespeare's Sonnet 130. She's no supermodel, with her wiry hair, pasty complexion, and breath that “reeks.” Still, her lover declares: “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare/As any she belied with false compare.” Maybe the mistress needs to pay a little more attention to her hygiene. And maybe the speaker needs to learn how not to tell his par
tner he loves her. Using eight lines to detail her thorough lack of grace and beauty, then sneaking in two lines about how he loves her anyway, isn't going to cut it. “You stink, but I love you, you huge pile of dough,” is all she's going to hear.
No matter how long you've been together or how well you think you know each other, you still need to romance your partner, especially in stability. Don't run off and get an extreme makeover or buy into the whole red-roses-and-champagne bit. Instead, try being kind, receptive, and respectful, practicing what Henry V would call “plain and uncoined constancy.” You simply need to show your partner, often and in whatever tender, goofy way you both understand, that his or her heart is your home and that you plan to be there permanently. Like the speaker in Mark Doty's “To the Engraver of My Skin” (who is getting a tattoo), you've signed up “for whatever comes” in the relationship, even if it hurts. You want your partner to know “I'm here/for revision, discoloration; here to fade/and last.”
That long-term, written-on-the-heart commitment is what keeps stability stable, at least for as long as both partners can honor it. While it lasts, this kind of love provides real comfort, a safe haven from the things we all fear, like loneliness and loss. If you're lucky enough to experience stability, you tend to want to cling to it, hoping it will protect you from what the speaker in Etheridge Knight's “A Love Poem” calls “the cyclops” who “peers into my cave.” Like the frostbitten houses in Donald Hall's “The Hunkering,” you want to “tighten [yourself] for darkness and/hunker down” in the warmth of your relationship.
Still, in order to live fully in stability, you need to accept that even this secure love could be dashed any second. One of you could fall out of love. One of you could get sick. The whole world could go kerflooey. And somehow you need not to be a nervous wreck about it all—pretty hard when you're as content as you've ever been in your life.
One solution is to try the strategy of the speaker in Linda Pastan's “An Early Afterlife.” “Why don't we say goodbye right now,” she asks her lover, “before whatever is going to happen/happens.” In other words, why not live as if every day might be the last? Not weeping with melodrama, but living gratefully and gracefully, trying to “use the loving words/we otherwise might not have time to say.” That way, “we would bask/in an early afterlife of ordinary days, impervious to the inclement weather/already in our long-range forecast./Nothing could touch us. We'd never/have to say goodbye again.”
You Drive Me Crazy Page 2